People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.